Poorly Written Sports Commentary

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Manning on SNL

Manning faces one of the biggest challenges of his career. How can he succeed as host despite an awful cast that includes such comedy geniuses as Keenan Thompson? But hey, if the show goes poorly, he can always just blame it on the cast members like he did to his offensive line two years ago in the playoffs. That move made me lose all respect for Manning. I think Manning has comedic potential though. Based on his playing demeanor you would think he has no sense of humor. However, he holds up well on commercials and I saw him on Letterman once and he did well.

Monologue-The show starts with an extremely weak Bush related opener; Peyton you can go nowhere but up from here.-Manning references his overexposure on commercials. This is a good sign; he is willing to make fun of himself.-Peyton is racing through his monologue, talking very fast.-All the Manning’s are here, that’s a lot of pressure-Wow, fake United Way commercial with Manning made me laugh out loud, this show has potential. Manning cursing equals comedy gold.

Bronx Beat Sketch-Peyton being a guest interviewed by Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler for Bronx Beat. I guess this is how women in the Bronx act. I don’t have much familiarity with the area. These seem like recurring characters and aren’t very funny at all.-The strategy seems to be to not let Manning do much talking. They are warming him up. They are making him throw some screen passes to Rhodes before he starts going deep to Harrison. Don’t they know Peyton Manning needs no warming up.-Manning appears in an actual MasterCard commercial. That motherfucker can do it all.

ESPN Bracket Sketch-ESPN style show, bringing the leaders of ESPN’s national bracket pool together for discussion of their picks. Manning appearing as sports reporter and Amy Poehler as a receptionist. The joke appears to be that she is clueless and picked the bracket by team colors and mascots.-It is saved when they refer to Arizona as pulling a Manning because they did well in the regular season but lost when it counted. I don’t think he would have allowed this joke had he not won the Super Bowl last year. I really think that was a sensitive subject for him.-Manning overacts being angry about the pulling a Manning reference.-The April 14th show is hosted by Shia Lebeouf. I had to google that name to find out who exactly that was. I am not very hip. I own a PC, not a Mac.

Couple Sketch-Manning and Maya Rudolph play a couple at a party. Another woman playing a character, who may be a recurring character, is always one upping everyone’s claims.-Manning is enormous; he towers over the women in this sketch. I laugh about that but nothing else from the skit elicits laughter.

Halftime Sketch-Sports related with Manning taking a bigger role-Premise involves a team not wanting to return to the game because they are scared. Will Forte plays the coach and tries to fire up the team and begins dancing to strange music.-Manning visibly laughing at Forte’s dancing, towel over face. Keenan, harnessing skills learned from his stint on Snick, reigns in his laugh and quickly composes himself. What a fucking pro.-Manning dancing elicits laughter from me. His hips are thrashing wildly and his face becomes serious. He throws in a little Pulp Fiction Travolta in and then begins to play Forte’s leg as guitar. It is one fantastic mess of a dance.-Yet another Manning commercial. Were those planned?-I notice Andy Samburg is in the background of this skit. Wasn’t he supposed to be the savior of SNL with his digital shorts? He has been involved very little in the program

Movie Set Sketch-Manning is dressed and heavily as some sort of ogre creature on a movie set. He needs to throw a rock at Fred Armisen but can’t do it for some reason. This inability to throw the rock results in frustration from the crew. That is the joke. Manning is not wearing a shirt. He has a chicken chest. A shirtless Fred Armisen has more pectoral definition.

Front Porch Sketch-Manning and female cast member are drinking coffee on a bench outside the house. Conversation starts out mundane, married couple stuff. As the sketch progresses, comments get more outrageous. This has been done many times before. Quickly cuts to the Meatloaf Mercedes Benz commercial not even worth describing

Show Wrap-up-Final goodbyes, unfortunately Manning doesn’t publicly blame the cast for the show’s weak performance.-It’s Manning’s birthday, Eli Manning and what looks like another Manning, possibly Cooper, present him with a cake.-Overall not a bad performance for Manning, nothing to be ashamed of at all. However, the other cast members and writers should be very ashamed of themselves.